Category Archives: 140conf

I'm happy that you are all reminding me that narcissism isn't fun if you can't walk anywhere to be seen looking pretty. #

"The half-life of [the avg] tweet is 4mins," in terms of people interacting w/them. Consider in promoting links, products, content. #140conf#
@wfenza just like radioactive isotopes – falloff continues to approach 0 value over time. 50% of the value of tweets is in the first 4mins. in reply to wfenza#

@wockerjabby “When we passed the notes the teachers collected them, when they pass notes the world sees it.” #140conf#

“It's not enough for a musician to be an artist, they have to be an internet hustler. They have to be keyboard cat.”- @1000timesyes #140conf#

#140conf @jw: a truck @sxsw gave away a free taco for each @gowalla checkin, sold 12 for each they gave away! "Flashmobbed their own truck!" #

Staff for @twelpforce were sourced from participants on their internal social network. (Huge point; may blog on it later) #140conf#

"The role of journalists and editors now is to form [news] into a piece of narrative and inform." #140conf#

Only at #140conf could I wind up kidnapped in a car full of twitter-friends / strangers listening to Jay-Z on the way to an after-party. #

I would just like to point out that I was asking "WWMD?" way before Glee: http://bit.ly/9duIEf (That's, "What Would Madonna Do?") #

Apparently I was retweeted by @mchammer the other day. Twitter has made my life surreal. #

The power of "hello" – @MOgulnick said hi to me in line on day 1 of #140conf and we wound up sitting & lunching together the entire time! #
& proving everyone is a character: @MOgulnick is a sports fanatic & the new media strategist behind @HVRenegades, the Tampa Ray's SS-A team! #

The #140conf was a lot to absorb in just two days – over a hundred speakers across dozens of talks. I took copious notes to aid my absorption, many of which found their way onto the blog.

As I captured my minute-by-minute notes, I realized that organizer Jeff Pulver didn’t put together a mix tape of information – he composed a symphony. The major themes that emerged were developed, transposed, restated, and transformed by an orchestra of characters on the stage.

I’ve recapped those five major themes below. If you attended (or watched online), do you agree that these ideas were prevalent and consisten?

Did you also hear other prevailing melodies in the symphony? If so, what were they?

1. Twitter has proven its power as a instrument of change on both the macro and micro levels.
Over the course of the conference we heard about single people freed from rubble in Haiti and entire nations where governments were held accountable for their actions (including our own!). When it comes to changing our world, Twitter has moved past the proof-of-concept stage.

2. Education must become digitally native and socially connected.
Every day that parents and educators rely on the existing pedagogic paradigm and ignore the ubiquity of social technology in the lives of our students is a day they are under-serving them. This isn’t a change that is constrained by the digital divide – kids in Tanzania learned socially on the playground!

3. Journalism is not dead, but it’s undergoing a metamorphosis.
In a world of countless citizen reporters we need still journalists and editors to help us locate the underexposed stories and shape them into coherent, impactful narratives. If anything, journalists have more power than ever to expose the public to truth – especially if they can bridge the gap from existing broadcast vehicles to socially sourced and shared stories.

4. We’ve only begun to witness the power of contextual information to make social media hyper-local and hyper-personal.
FourSquare is the tip of the iceberg of new social technology that will harness your contextual information to provide a more localized and personalized experience based on the data you choose to reveal. There is a risk to privacy inherent in these technologies, and we must accept the responsibility of managing that risk even as the rules that define it continue to shift.

5. Brands and business models that translate themselves seamlessly to Social Media find their truest advocates there – both existing and new.
The power of consistent branding is more important than ever, and so is brand strategy. Whether you sell credit card, houses, or comic books, your enthusiastic audience is awaiting engagement that’s true to your brand.

Oh, and more anecdotally:

The majority of professionals use Tweetdeck and/or Co-Tweet.
Seriously, every laptop screen at every seat seemed to be viewing one or the other.

Social media people are the easiest people to network with – especially at #140conf.
Everyone has a story and everyone is genuinely interested in your story. Walking up to strangers can be scary, but the vast majority of them will be happy you did.

#140conf was a lot to digest, and so were my nearly two dozen posts on the subject. I know not everyone has time for either, and definitely not both.

In the 140 spirit of brevity, below I present my abridged version of the conference as told by just 14 can’t-miss talks. I left out a lot of panels I really loved or learned from in favor of the ones that pack the most punch as videos, and that help to tell the surprisingly consistent narrative I drew from the event.

Watching my abridged version will take a bit longer than 140 minutes, as the panel chats are 15-20 minutes in length.

Even if you aren’t on the list I likely still loved your talk, because I loved the entire event. If you want to see the entire conference and you have the time to watch one video a day for the next few months it would be time well spent.

Jeff opens with why our discreet digital footprints matter. One status update might not be meaningful now, but in aggregate later when you don’t remember yourself (or when others don’t remember you) it will be more important. Social media is the new shoebox of family photos.

The book panel started before I could even start typing – these gentlemen had so much to say about launching books, building community, and “creating” versus “marketing”!

On the whole they were very incisive, and their recommendations extend far beyond just the realm of paperback bestsellers. Great points all around, but especially from Tim Ferriss, author of The Four Hour Work Week.

“We have secrecy for secret, privacy for private” but no word for things that are made (or made to remain) public.”

Every paragraph of this talk has a notable quotable. I encourage you to read it and consider what it means to you. It was easy to summarize rather than transcribe, because it was organized very well – the words are mine, but the content entirely belongs to Stowe.

Two great panels – one from journalists, and another from the comic book industry – talking about how their two newsprint industries can move seamlessly into the social web.

This is the quote of the entire conference, because at least half of it has been about this:

“The role of journalists and editors now is to form [news] into a piece of narrative and inform. Real time web becomes right time web,” getting the information people want to them in a digestible format at the right time.

Also, my paraphrase from the comic panel:

It’s not a surprise that creators are celebrities – they are the artist and the auteur. It’s different than film or television stars.

Presenting two non-adjacent sets of notes here – one on a talk with a venture capitalist on Twitter’s board of directors, and another about how Telecoms can survive and thrive with Twitter instead of going extinct.

Heading from there to three back-to-back-to-back music panels! I’m mostly getting off the laptop for these (even though I absorb better while I’m on it). Just seems like the ones I should be most intellectually present for, even at the risk of losing some of the play-by-play.

Below are summaries of Social Communications & Radio, MC Hammer, and Real Time Web & Music.